Diary

The war on terror has many bedfellows. Today we meet just one of them, the war on cinema. Hostilities begin in Brighton, where anti-war protesters committed to celluloid their campaign against EDO, the local armourer. The result, a documentary called On the Verge, is to be shown at venues around the country. The tour was to begin with a screening at Brighton's Duke of York cinema, but things all became a little strange when the local council said the screening could not take place because the film had not been certificated. They said the police wanted it banned, and so the showing was cancelled. In the days that followed, the police denied any official intervention - a claim contested by the council. But what is stranger still is that, since then, many of the scheduled screenings, in towns the length and breadth of the country, have apparently encountered similar difficulties. Some venues, it is said, have been told they risk prosecution over the certification issue; others that they are assisting subversives. The result, of course, is that many more people than before want to see the film, and now mainstream cinemas want to screen it. Isn't notoriety just the best PR?

· There are rowdy cheers and gleeful boos as Lord Archer takes up the auctioneer's hammer to raise funds for the Hampstead Theatre at Lord's cricket ground. The West End Extra, which covered the event, shows him as masterful as he could wish to be, squeezing £53,000 from a captive audience which counted Ewan McGregor among its ranks. "Will you give me twelve fifty (£1,250)?", the shouty peer asks a male guest, hoping to hike up one of the bids. "Your wife is saying 'yes'." He pauses: "Oh - it's not your wife. I apologise," he says. But that's the Lord Archer. What you see is what you get.

· So which leader said of his government, "We make the right decisions at all times", asks reader Mike Turbine-Hamilton. Was it 1) Robert Mugabe, 2) Adolf Hitler, 3) Josef Stalin or 4) Gordon Brown. Think Northern Rock. Or lost data. Non-doms. The election that never was. Then consider how difficult it must be to endure all that and emerge with certainties intact. Calls for a person of particular talents. Not flash, just Gordon.

· Meanwhile, keen to scotch the rumours of a rancorous atmosphere in Downing Street, Spencer Livermore, the outgoing strategy chief, turned convention on its head last week by buying his employer a gift to mark his departure. It was a Thomas the Tank Engine book called Spencer and Gordon. The gesture, we are told, impacted on all who saw it. Not a moist eye in the house.

· Forgive us if you will for this item of housekeeping, but could the somewhat erratic caller who rang yesterday warning us not to print anything about the internet game Dustbingate on the basis that John Prescott would be furious and that he is still a very important man/well connected, etc, please call back. We have long ago mentioned Dustbingate, the saga which followed the theft of Prescott's dustbin in 1998 by five Hull labourers keen to destroy him. One day, perhaps, we might have done so again. But with calls like this, at once menacing and laughable, the matter takes on new urgency. So call again, won't you? Share the burden.

· And finally, what can President Sarkozy expect as he tours the Emirates stadium, home to Arsenal, in the company of its estimable manager Arsène Wenger? Well, he shouldn't expect any comments about the ravishing Carla. "Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home," Wenger once said, rebuking Sir Alex Ferguson. Neither is Wenger one for finery. He dresses modestly, lives quietly, and drives an understated, if suitably plush, saloon. So it may be that all they have in common is a tendency towards selective shortsightedness. Sarkozy the interior minister always looked the other way when the police were cracking heads in the banlieues. Wenger never notices when one of his players upends an opponent. They can talk about wilful blindness, things they haven't seen. Not the basis for a lifelong friendship. But it's a start.